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Can resetting the body clock help with depression?

Disrupted sleep patterns affect mental health, and researchers now hope that repairing circadian rhythms could ease symptoms.
  1. Sarah DeWeerdt

    1. Sarah DeWeerdt is a science writer based in Seattle, Washington.

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Between 2015 and 2018, researchers invited 23 people to a laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, for a study of the body’s daily cycles, known as circadian rhythms. During one phase of the experiment, the study participants kept to a fairly typical night-time sleep schedule. In another phase, the researchers reversed the participants’ sleep–wake cycle in a procedure that was designed to mimic the experience of night-shift workers.

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Nature 608, S50-S51 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02211-y

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Depression, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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